The Collected Letters, Volume 32

My dear you are already getting terribly deficient in writing; I made sure of a Letter at least today: but 3 o'clock is here, Piper1 past witht calling: how is this? To think of valid excuses that there might be, is too frightful! And yet I continually remember that horrid bath you had in the railway night.
I beg of you to write immediately, and tell me the truth about yourself. At other times I wd not make the writing of Notes to me a burden to you; but you must not leave me in any suspense as the above. You know, I doubt not, how pleasant all Letters of yours are to me, and what a
treat one daily or oftener wd be; but it shall remain in the hands of your own charity, except as regards health-bulletins: with these I cannot dispense!

Thomas Carlyle smoking under the awning, 5 Cheyne Row, by Robert Scott Tait, 29 July 1857

Courtesy of Edinburgh University Library

This is your birthday; dear little soul, may God grant us only many of them,—I think now and then I could dispense with all
other blessings! Our years have been well laden with sorrows, a quite sufficient ballast allowed us; but while we are together here, there is always a world left. I am not to send you any Gift, other than this
scrap of Paper; but I might give you California, and not mean more than perhaps I do. And so may there be many years; and
(as poor Irving used to say) the worst of them over!—

All is going on here in a tolerable sort. Dog Nero is wriggling himself upon the dry grass beside me; canaries are bursting
now and then into song; I watered the two vegetable individualities, and (except that a yellow scoundrel is grinding his organ
audibly) things are all well. I have not indeed slept well, these three nights; but perhaps it was partly want of walking
enough. I am dieted reasonably: brown-soups and pudding today, for example;—Anne even undertakes to make me porridge; she
did it too, on Saturday night, really not so very ill. I had decided on renouncing my milk otherwise:—two nights I took the cream
off it, hid it below one of the “noblemen”2 in the Garden, and it was as sweet as nuts in the morning! But porridge (after a long walk) will be a real improvement. Our
weather has grown hot, hot: I have fled the garret, and got under the awning altogether,—today and yesterday for the whole
day. Waste-basket for papers, and Butler's tray3 for Books, are in requisition: you never saw a nicer awning than I have now made it, by readjusting the ropes;—and I even
get some shadow of work done in it, on these more wholesome terms. Nay today I had my breakfast there,—wished you had been
with me on such a pastoral occasion.

Sir Colin Campbell, Tait tells me, is off yesterday morning (quite on the sudden, hardly 12 hours warning) to look after the Army in India, from whh there are still bad news.4 Anson, the late Sham Commander, is dead of cholera.5 That is the only public news. Ld Ashburton never turned up again; I believe he goes for the Highlands this week. Milnes's ‘tea’ turned out to be a Soiree; inexpressibly choking and wearisome to me: Mrs Crowe6 &c there, uglier than ever. Allingham7 walked to this door with me: ach Himmel [oh Heaven]; and “the Beauty”8 was here one day, safe back.9 Printing is slow; my heart is oftenest very heavy.— Fuz applies for another dinnerparty—both of us;—not knowing that you are off. “Sir de Lacy,” and soldier science,10 is the pretext; I will shirk if I can possibly. Diggers have set to picking and thumping in Gilchrist's Garden,11 and the yellow friend is unwearied. God grant thou be well, Dearest! Adieu

3. A rectangular hardwood tray, with hinged sides, which can be folded out to make a flat oval.

4. Colin Campbell left for India, 12 July: “The fact that Sir Colin Campbell had been suddenly appointed to the chief command in India and had actually, with heroic
promptitude, taken his departure, led everyone to believe that the Government entertained no small apprehensions” (Times,13 July). Long-standing religious and political grievances against the British administration in India, exacerbated by rumors that
cartridges were being greased with cow and pig fat (offensive to Hindus and Muslims), culminated in a brutal and widespread
uprising, which began, 10 May, at Meerut, 30 mi. NE of Delhi. News of the rebellion, known as the Indian Mutiny, did not reach London until the end of
June, first reported, Times,27 June. The Times,13 July, on the basis of intelligence from 8 June, reported that it was clearly no local disturbance “arising from any definite grievance real or imagined, with which we have
to deal. It is the rising of a whole army against a Supreme Power.” It was hopeful that the next news would be of the “insurgents'
defeat”; the rebellion continued until July 1859.

5. Gen. George Anson (1797–1857), commander-in-chief of the Indian Army from 1856, was widely criticized for not responding more quickly when he heard, 12 May, that the rebels from Meerut had joined with rebellious forces in Delhi and taken the city. He d. of cholera, 27 May.

7. Allingham wrote to JWC, 5 July, wishing her “a good journey” and hoping that she might “feel inclined to write to me someday, during the next 12 months”;
he also felt “some doubts (which I suppose might to have been felt sooner) whether the transaction I told you of, of Ruskin's
giving an annuity &c, was not intended to be a secret,—though I was never bidden to keep it so”; presumably a different annuity
from the one that Ruskin had given to the Lowe sisters in 1856 (see TC to EOT, 28 Jan. 1856).

10. Fuz: John Forster. Sir George de Lacy Evans, a military reformer who had recently spoken in parliament in favor of reform
of army organization and recruitment (Hansard 144:2254), changes in the manner in which troops were housed during the winter months when not on active service (Hansard 145:884), and officers' education. He put forward a resolution suggesting better provision and a higher standard of professional
instruction for army officers, particularly staff officers, and the introduction of competitive examinations conducted by
an independent board (28 July, Hansard 147:569).